Season 5 Podcast 142 John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Episode 43 Chapter 9 B, “The Hill Caution.”

A New Voice of Freedom

Season 5 Podcast 142 John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Episode 43 Chapter 9 B, “The Hill Caution.”

In last week’s episode Christian and Hopeful meet the four shepherds, Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere on top of the Delectable Mountains. In this week’s episode the Shepherds take them to the Hill Caution.

Just because they have made it as far as the Delectable Mountains does not mean they can let their guard down.

“Then I saw that they had them to the top of another mountain, and the name of that is Caution and bid them look afar off; and when they did, they perceived, as they thought, several men walking up and down among the tombs that were there; and they perceived that the men were blind, because they stumbled sometimes upon the tombs, and because they could not get out from among them. Then said Christian, "What means this?"

The answer both startles and depresses Christian and Hopeful who know all too well what the blind men had gone through.

“The shepherds then answered, "Did you not see a little below these mountains a stile that led into a meadow on the left hand side of this way?" They answered, "Yes." Then said the shepherds, "From that stile there goes a path that leads directly to Doubting Castle, which is kept by Giant Despair; and these men" (pointing to them among the tombs) "came once on pilgrimage, as you do now, even until they came to that same stile. And because the right way was rough in that place, they chose to go out of it into that meadow, and there were taken by Giant Despair, and cast into Doubting Castle, where, after they had been kept a while in the dungeon, he at last did put out their eyes, and led them among those tombs, where he has left them to wander to this very day, that the saying of the Wise Man might be fulfilled, 'He that wandereth out of the way of knowledge, shall remain in the congregation of the dead.'" Then Christian and Hopeful looked upon one another with tears gushing out, but yet said nothing to the shepherds.”

The four shepherds point out another pitfall in the Delectable Mountains which is the very mouth of hell itself.

“Then I saw in my dream, that the shepherds had them to another place in a bottom, where was a door on the side of a hill; and they opened the door, and bid them look in. They looked in, therefore, and saw that within it was very dark and smoky; they also thought that they heard there a rumbling noise, as of fire, and a cry of some tormented, and that they smelt the scent of brimstone. Then said Christian, "What means this?" The shepherds told them, "This is a by-way to hell, a way that hypocrites go in at: namely, such as sell their birthright, with Esau; such as sell their master, with Judas; such as blaspheme the Gospel, with Alexander; and that lie and deceive with Ananias and Sapphira his wife."

We all know the story of Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of pottage and Judas betraying Christ. Poor Esau was starving and lost sight of what was most valuable. His story is also played out in the Temptations of Christ who, after a very long fast, was understandably extremely hungry; however, he refused to turn the stone to bread. He gave Satan the following answer.

Matthew 4:2-4

“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Christ understood that which Esau did not. Christ was tempted in the same way that Esau was, but as Paul said, he never gave in to temptation. Still the story of Ananias and Sapphira is very disturbing. The following story is recorded by Paul.